[development] Consolidating duplicate contrib modules for D7

[JT Justman]

Jamie Holly wrote:
> That group is very valuable, but it shouldn't be considered a solution
> for this issue. The biggest complaint of Drupal is the "steep learning
> curve" and when you read those complaints you commonly see reference to
> the situation of multiple modules that provide the same basic features.
> Sure if someone is patient and has the time they can download all
> similar modules and see which one is the best for their situation, but
> who really has that time? Also you get the issue of modules that don't
> fully uninstall, leaving behind things like settings and sometimes
> tables, so you end up with artifacts in the database. (Though I got to
> admit, as someone who used to do a lot of work in PHPBB, the process
> with Drupal is a lot less painful. Nothing like spending hours copying
> and pasting in core changes to find out it wasn't exactly what you wanted)
> 

As a Drupal newbie but OSS veteran, I will say that Drupal's module
system is a little frustrating at times, but FAR better than any other
platform with such a diverse set of "modules". Generally I decide based
on metadata first and foremost: maturity of the module, and activity
level of the maintainer(s).

Auditioning modules and worrying about uninstall has not been a problem
for me, since I run a local development install and going back to a
previous database dump only takes a few seconds. I love how flexible
Drupal has been in that regard.

I do however think that modules whose names are only different because
of punctuation are extremely confusing. I've been through this with node
access and site maps. Some kind of namespace duplication checking with
an informational warning might be nice.

However the most helpful thing so far has been the previously mentioned
blocks on the module page describing differences to other modules, and
for modules lacking that for some concerned party to create a ticket
asking the author to describe the differences, like:

http://drupal.org/node/583270

Thanks,

JT